Generally speaking, roses like to get a good drink of water, and drain out.
I would not choose to water them in this manner, myself.

Jeri

vettin, depending upon your heat, type of pot, soil choice, type of water (alkaline, acidic, neutral) the answer to your question will vary. Here, I can't use clay or ceramic pots for roses. It's too hot and they WILL cook the roots in short order. The sun is far too intense, so the pots have to be nearly completely shaded or they need to be something more insulated, not heat absorbing or something which releases the heat quickly.

Drip here is not sufficient. The alkaline salts in our water build up unless flushed out. Saucers here are the kiss of death. The salts are applied every time you water. They concentrate in the saucers and continually increase the salt build up in the soil as the runoff water is drawn back into the pots. Drip would make that build up faster as it would never flush them from the soil ball. The pots would never really be watered enough because of evaporation and the continual cooking by the radiant sun energy.

The soil breathes by water flushing the carbon dioxide from it as it percolates through, drawing air into the soil behind it. Drip can't do that. Root "exhale" carbon dioxide and benefit from its replacement with oxygen. Under the right conditions, drip can be OK, but potted plants definitely benefit from a good soaking flush regularly. Kim

I always take the saucers off my rose pots before planting. The worst thing is for rose roots to sit in water. I don't know anything about drip systems because I have no way to run the necessary lines from where my faucet is to where the pots are. I water all my potted roses by hand. I have heard of other people who have used drip systems in pots successfully though.

I would also avoid clay or ceramic pots. They wick water away from the plant, they do not winter well and they weigh a ton empty so imagine how heavy they are full of a mature rose and wet soil!

I'm in full accord with Jeri's succinct response. First, ensure very good drainage, and water your container roses OFTEN.

Personally, I prefer clay or ceramic pots for both esthetic and cultural reasons. All potted roses in proper-sized containers weigh a ton, so why opt for heat-retaining plastic when the alternatives are so much more pleasing to the eye and (I think) to the plant?

We're moving into warmer weather now, in SoCal -- Even here, near the coast. Roses in pots need water every other day now. In a few weeks, it will be EVERY day.

We don't USUALLY get the sort of heat Kim gets, and we CAN use plastic pots ... and we do, if (as is true for most) the pots are only a waystation en route to some other person's garden, or a real spot in our garden. A few very small things DO remain in pots, and I've found glazed ceramic pots in pretty colors work OK for those ... but they're usually very small roses.

I'd love to have no roses in pots, exposed to rampaging Dalmatians and hot weather. Far safer, in the ground.

Jeri

A black plastic nursery can remains MUCH cooler than a terra cotta or ceramic pot. The plastic is far less dense, absorbs much less heat, transmits much less of it to the interior of the pot to the roots and holds and radiates significantly less heat after the heat source is removed from it (direct sun, hot air, etc.) Even in cool air (60 - 65 degrees F) two blocks from the surf in Pacific Palisades, I could take people into the area and have them reach inside black plastic cans then into ceramic and terra cotta pots and feel the difference. Move inland where the temperatures increase often by 50 degrees and the sun is tremendously more intense (no fog filter, much less humidity) and the effects go up geometrically.

You can buy terra cotta cooking ware. Corning makes ceramic cookware. Long after the sun moves from shining directly on the pot, plastic releases that heat. Ceramic and terra cotta hold it for a long time, radiating it into both the soil ball and air. Don't believe it? Set those types of pots outside in the sun and check it for yourself. Terra cotta pots dry out much faster than black plastic nursery cans, not only because they're porous but also because they get hotter and remain hotter, longer.

When I worked at the coast, the trick for getting sweet tomatoes, strawberries, oranges and grapefruit was to plant them in terra cotta pots in the full sun. The increased heat from those pots triggered the plants to form the sugars which produced the flavors. In plastic, fiberglass or in the ground, the fruit was bland. Sugar formation requires heat. Terra cotta and ceramic pots in cooler environments supply it better than anything. In hotter ones, they'll cook the devil out of a plant in very short order.

I can't use anything smaller than a 22" clay pot here in Encino. With our sun and heat, anything smaller is toast in a day. I've grown many roses in black plastic nursery cans for a decade and longer. Not just used that kind of pot that long, actually kept the same rose in the plastic can ten and more years. When you have hybrids you've created which spread like bamboo on steriods, it's the only way to contain them. Kim
Kim

Jax, if you only have a few pots that you want to place around decoratively I suppose clay or ceramic would be fine. But when you have over 60 roses in pots to move around that big weight difference adds up quickly and takes a mean toll on your back! I started out with mine in lovely glazed pots too but as the numbers went up (and I lost many expensive pots to winter) I soon learned to look for the plastic ones. I'm slowly going into the newer molded foam pots now because they hold up even better than the thin plastic ones do. A lot of my older plastic pots are getting brittle and starting to crack now from UV exposure. All my potted roses are on my cement patio and they have to be moved out of the way all the time for different reasons so I put all of them up on pot trolleys as well. The trolleys make it much easier to move them around without having to lift them. The trolleys also aid in two ways. By keeping the pots up off the concrete they allow for better drainage and also keeps the cement from sucking those pots dry. Concrete is like a sponge and loves to absorb moisture and can pull water out of a pot quickly. Oh well now make that three reasons. I just remembered that that patio gets blazing hot and the cement gets to hot to stand on barefoot without burning your feet. The pot trolleys allow for better air circulation around the pots keeping them cooler!

That's interesting about the black nursery pots, Kim. I have always heard that those black pots get too hot in the sun because the black color absorbs the heat.

Black does absorb heat more efficiently than lighter colors, Seil, but it's the material that's the issue. Plastic isn't dense, nor is it a good conductor. Clay, terra cotta, ceramic are all dense. They absorb and hold the heat quite efficiently, radiating it throughout the interior, which is why bake ware and cook ware made of the stuff is so efficient. With the intensity of our sun and heat, the only time I can get away with using terra cotta is to use a pot 22" or larger. Even then, there can be issues at the upper limits.

The safest types here are the molded foam you're speaking of. Think ice chest. Whatever insulates to keep cold or hot in, will keep cold and hot out. Wood, concrete, fiberglass, foam are all good and will prevent the transmission of the absorbed and radiated heat to the soil ball. You can also line the inside of the pot with thin styrofoam or bubble wrap. Both work quite well, insulating the roots and soil ball from the radiated heat.

I'm not saying roses can't or won't cook in a black plastic nursery can, but in my experience here, they'll last a whale of a lot longer in one than in clay or ceramic. I have a Baby Faurax tree rose I budded on a whip of Cardinal Hume. I planted it last week from its fifteen gallon can. It has lived in that can since I budded it and the metal tag fixed to the metal pipe I've used to stake it with from the beginning is dated 1994. I've added new soil above and below the root ball numerous times, but it's always gone back into that can. Kim